Mapping the Evolution of a Wicked Problem
Carnegie Mellon, Transition Design Seminar 2021
Team Synergy — Aashrita Indurti, Madeline Sides, Monica Chang, Sian Sheu
This article is Part 3 of a series of articles (Part 1 here, Part 2 here) about mapping and designing transitions in waste management in Pittsburgh as part of the Transition Design Seminar at Carnegie Mellon School of Design.
Introduction
As part of our journey toward designing waste management transitions in Pittsburgh, our project team has worked to develop a deeper understanding of this wicked problem’s historical evolution. To do so, we employed the multi-level perspective (MLP) framework, which has been adopted as part of Transition Design, to guide our study and mapping of Pittsburgh’s historical waste management transitions.
In the MLP framework, transitions are seen as “non-linear processes that result from the interplay of developments at three analytical levels: niches (the locus for radical innovations), socio-technical regimes (the locus of established practices and associated rules that stabilize existing systems), and an exogenous sociotechnical landscape” (Geels 2011). We summarize our working understanding of these levels here:
The niche level is defined by radical innovation that challenges and disrupts from the bottom up. These niche innovations are started by small groups that when combined, can create great change in the regime.
The regime, made up of the local government and institutional norms help to establish structure. Changes in the landscape can create cracks in the regime in which the niche level can leverage.
The landscape looks at the overarching slow-moving change that puts pressure top-down on the regime. These events can span from cultural changes to wars and pandemics, and are usually not connected to just a single wicked problem.
Historical Contributing Factors
Industry and Environmental Damage
Pittsburgh, aka “Steel City,” has long been known for its extractive industries. The discovery of coal in the 1760s helped fuel industrialization at the expense of the environment. With factories set up along the Monongahela River, the waterways were used as a dumping ground for both industrial and human waste for many years. As the population grew, so did the need for clean household water. In the 1800s, Pittsburgh built the City Square Pump House in order to bring in unfiltered water into the city. Though convenient, this unfiltered water can be tied to a plethora of historical disease outbreaks in the city, particularly of Typhoid.
At the same time, people disposed of their waste in various ways including dumping it on the street or burning it. The golden age of Pittsburgh lasted about 40 years, where industry and trade thrived. As the city was a popular transportation route, people also looked at it as a dumping ground for trash. It wasn’t until the mid-1900s that Pittsburgh adopted landfills as a means for garbage disposal and incineration facilities were banned from burning municipal solid waste. As new regulations were put in place and new recycling methods were utilized, Pittsburgh started to become a more livable city.
Health
Pittsburgh’s long history of water-borne diseases can be linked to poor waste management. From 1829 to 1850, an outbreak of cholera diseases infected the residents of Pittsburgh. Though unknown at the time, this disease was caused by consuming contaminated water. Soon after, in 1872, Typhoid fever swept the nation. Pittsburgh had the highest mortality rate of any city in the US for a time. The disease infected over 54,000 people and killed over 7,000. Infection rates remained high until the city of Pittsburgh passed the Purity of Waters Act in 1905 and installed filtration and chlorination systems.
Technology
Pittsburgh’s long tryst with technology dates back to the 18th century when coal was discovered along the banks of the Monongahela River. The prosperity from steel production and thriving related industries, brought technologies like flushable toilets to Pittsburgh. However, these wealth-generating activities were also accompanied by pollution, toxic waste and the spread of diseases in the city.
The second industrial revolution in the US enabled mass production of various goods in a growing number of factories. These factories and the goods they produced ultimately led to pollution of water, air and the environment in cities throughout the US. The proliferation of factory jobs drove mass expansion and urbanization of the city as well as production of waste. As such, more than 700 incinerator units were installed around the country to manage waste. These incinerators polluted the air of cities and counties nationwide for decades before the Clean Air Act came into effect, forcing the closure of a number of incinerators.
This regulation drove the adoption of landfills an alternative means of garbage disposal. The design of these landfills was carefully planned and drafted to improve the burn out of solid waste and complete combustion of the exiting gases in order to reduce pollution. This Mass Burn Process was successful and these incinerators were adopted as a way of disposing of municipal solid waste (MSW).
It wasn’t until the late 90s and the early 2000s, that awareness around the concept of recycling waste and plastics took hold in the US. Yet, despite these accepted management techniques, the waste generation problem only grew during this time with booms in household consumption, in part driven by the adoption of e-commerce to further facilitate material consumption. In Pittsburgh, the creation of a Zero Waste Plan in 2017, in partnership with a national NGO, kicked off various tech-powered waste sorting and recycling methods.
Today, an AI-powered Trashbot is now used to sort and segregate different types of waste materials in parts of the city. The current trend involves moving away from single-use plastic and using more sustainable or biodegradable materials. The COVID-19 pandemic has, in some ways, reversed this progress, as demand for single-use plastics has peaked in the interest of cleanliness. The pandemic has also driven the adoption of new waste management and cleaning technologies in the PIT airport, where autonomous bots clean floors and other public spaces.
Politics
The political climate in Pittsburgh with respect to its concern for the environment and the irrepressible state of pollution was first seen with the establishment of the Public Health Act in 1875 after a major Cholera outbreak in the city. The awareness about the relationship between public health, waste management and pollution had just come to the forefront with the introduction of this policy. Post another Typhoid attack on the city, one that saw the highest mortality rate, an association called the Women’s Health Protective Association was formed to maintain and monitor sanitation in the city. The next few decades in the early 90s saw a bunch of associations and policies set in place pertaining to the purity of water, the Bureau of Smoke Control trying to reduce air pollution and a growing awareness around waste management.
Awareness about the social issue of systemic racism gained momentum after the Warren County Protests kicked off in North Carolina in 1982 and became a nationwide movement. African American communities and local residents protested and complained against unwanted land use. Waste disposal sites and landfills were close to where the African American Communities and as a result of reckless waste disposal, the marginalised communities were subjected to numerous health problems because of their proximity to the hazardous waste residue. The protests resulted in the formation of the Civil Rights Act which was followed by the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act, the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) and the Environmental Justice Movement. All these policies aimed to address the common goal of protecting human health and the environment from the potential hazards of waste disposal.
Our Process
1. Selecting the Time Frame
As the assignment’s scope was quite broad, our group spent a lot of time discussing how to go about selecting the time frame.
As waste management can be connected all the way to early settlers in Pittsburgh, it was difficult to pinpoint where to start our mapping. To help find focus, we each did individual research focusing on specific categories:
Disease, Hygiene and Related Events
Areas to Explore: Track diseases, 1910 pandemic, Micobe theory, Understanding of hygiene
Local Mindsets Over Time
Areas to Explore: Idea of throwing ‘away’, Appalachia mindsets both today and historically, Attitudinal roots of phenomena, Mindset of Pollution = Prosperity
Specifics of Waste Management Realities Over Time (1870 — 1970)
Areas to Explore: Historic accounts, Rivers as waste management solutions, City transitions, Coal and dust pollution, Waste burning
Specifics of Waste Management Realities Over Time (1970 — Present)
Areas to Explore: Dump building technologies, Environmental racism, Dump sites
Using the research gathered through exploring the various areas, we did an initial draft mapping and found the 1800s to early 2000s experienced the most drastic evolution. With the industrial revolution, the Great Depression, and World War II all spanned across the landscape, we were able to see a significant rise and fall of a lot of niche innovations that were connected to poor waste management in Pittsburgh.
What we found difficult about this initial process of mapping was determining which scale events fell under. It was especially troublesome to separate regime from niche as events seemed to span across both categories. What we found helpful during this step was looking at how each individual event contributed to others and the connections in between.
2. Final Mapping
The final map incorporates the three aspects of Health, Technology and Politics under the primary categories of landscape, regime and niche thus marking and highlighting the main events that played out under each of these categories.
3. Insights and Observations
- The number of diseases and pandemic attacks that held the city on tenterhooks was a gamechanger for the residents of Pittsburgh and this brought about awareness on public health and waste management
- The Golden Age of Pittsburgh along with the numerous waves of the Industrial Revolution created jobs and enhanced the quality of life for most people however it severely compromised the quality of air and water, giving rise to widespread pollution in the city
- Systemic Racism and the idea of Toxic Waste and Race Theory — The marginalized bunch of the society who work and live close to these landfills and waste disposal sites is the ones who are affected terribly by the reckless waste disposal methods. The capitalist mindset of the nation and the city widens the gap between the rich and the poor basis the access to decent healthcare, education, work opportunities, housing, and a safe living environment
- Pittsburgh practised waste disposal predominantly by shipping its waste to countries like China and Malaysia. In the last couple of years, these countries have been developing multifold and have the option of refusing these unwanted scraps as they contain heavily contaminated recyclables. In order to put in place a self-sustainable framework, the idea of sorting and dumping waste materials with AI-powered trash bots has been trending in Pittsburgh. The nation is moving towards banning single-use plastics and incorporating recyclable and sustainable materials
Cited Work
Geels, Frank W. “The multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions: Responses to seven criticisms.” SPRU, Science and Technology Policy Research, University of Sussex, United Kingdom. 18 February 2011.
“Our History.” Our History | Pittsburgh Water & Sewer Authority, www.pgh2o.com/about-us/our-history.
Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, www.philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/archive/artifact-centre-square-pump-house-model/.
Tierno, M J. “The Search for Pure Water in Pittsburgh: the Urban Response to Water Pollution, 1893–1914.” The Western Pennsylvania Historical Magazine, U.S. National Library of Medicine, Jan. 1977, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11633565.
“Pittsburgh’s Dark History.” Popular Pittsburgh, 12 June 2018, popularpittsburgh.com/darkhistory/.
William S. Dietrich II, et al. “A Very Short History of Pittsburgh.” Pittsburgh Quarterly, 9 Sept. 2020, pittsburghquarterly.com/articles/a-very-brief-history-of-pittsburgh/.
